Evidence of Saddam's evil
...There is more.One file from 1987 consists of extensive letters between Iraq's military intelligence (or Mukhabarat) and Saddam Hussein, confirming for the first time that Saddam himself ordered chemical weapons attacks against villages in northern Iraq. Those attacks began on a few dozen villages in April 1987 but culminated in the worst attack, in March 1988, on Halabja, a town of 70,000 where 5,000 reportedly died from poison gas over three days. Overall, approximately 12,000 are believed to have died from the attacks, commonly attributed to orders from Ali Hassan al-Majid, or "Chemical Ali."
One memo in the file informs the president that plans for chemical attack "have been readied. Weapons in Kurdish villages in the north and northeast are ready." It describes specific loads of sarin and mustard gas and prescribes targeted villages. It warns that "explosion of these chemicals will create clouds and the troops should not move before the clouds have settled." According to Walid Phares, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, whom WORLD asked to translate the file, after the president gives the OK, the Mukhabarat chief promises Saddam the attacks "will not only reach target but will reach another objective."
Mr. Phares, a Middle East scholar who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, is fluent in Arabic and three other languages and is familiar with Iraqi documents (see "Unmasked men," Oct. 16, 2004). He told WORLD: "This is a direct order of chemical attacks." Statements in one memo from Saddam state that "special equipment is in full production" and "our production is increasing." The assurances suggest that the chemical program was an integral part of Iraq's military apparatus, not a scientific/civilian offshoot as it would later be portrayed during UN weapons inspections in the 1990s.
"Between his chemical and nuclear capabilities, you may argue about his nuclear capabilities, but with this you cannot argue about his chemical capabilities," Mr. Phares said. If only Iraq's judiciary had known before it spent months and months trying to bring Saddam to trial over the killings of a few dozen Iraqis in a Shiite suburb.
Nuclear capabilities became a topic of discussion in a 1995 meeting with Saddam, vice president Tariq Aziz, and top military officials. An incomplete audiotape of the meeting runs over 62 minutes and begins with Saddam, Mr. Aziz, a Lt. Gen. "Amir" and others discussing how to dodge and parry their way through an upcoming report to the UN Security Council from UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus. "Sir . . . one could be suspicious of it [the Biological Program] if we concentrate on it [UNINTELLIGIBLE] and the trafficking effort and dodging everything in regards to it," a nervous Lt. Gen. Amir explains.
Throughout the meeting the top brass comes off as the frustrated but dutiful victim of oppressive UN sanctions, when in fact the Iraqi leaders are rehearsing their way out of full compliance with UN resolutions. Much of the give and take is about how closely to rely on the French and the Russians to counter the Americans and the British at the Security Council level. Then Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, interrupts uncomfortably: "On the nuclear file, Sir, we are saying that we disclosed everything? No, we have undeclared problems in the nuclear field, and I believe that they know them. Some teams work and no one knows some of them. Sir, I am sorry for speaking so clearly. Everything is over. But, did they know? No, Sir, they did not know; not all the methods, not all the means, not all the scientists, and not all the places."
About that time UN weapons inspectors were taken to a facility in the western desert, where they were shown proof Iraq had tested a nuclear weapon (a chapter now overlooked in both Iraq Survey Group reports and the media). Mr. Kamal would, only weeks later, defect to Jordan where he gave fresh evidence of an Iraq WMD program to UN inspectors, before deciding to return to Baghdad, apparently regretting the prospect of permanent separation from his family. Six months after the defection he was assassinated in Iraq.
...
A handwritten dossier dated Aug. 17, 2002, confirms an operational cell of al-Qaeda inside Iraq and identifies its key member as Ahmed Fadil Nizal Al Khalaylah—also known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the current leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. Saddam's regime, from the document, seems little concerned about the terrorist's presence—even though tolerating known terrorists violated UN resolutions—and less surprised, perhaps with reason. Another memo, dated Sept. 15, 2001, and from Afghanistan, notes a relationship between al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Baghdad, and a Dec. 1, 2001, memo reports on "the status of rumors" of 3,000 Fedayeen Saddam from Anbar Province who were dispatched "in an unofficial capacity to Afghanistan and have joined the mujahidin to fight with and aid them in defeating the American Zionist Imperialist attack."
Those admissions are news only to those who believe the U.S. invasion is responsible for the Iraq/al-Qaeda convergence. Documents already publicized by WORLD show Saddam's regime providing terrorist training and financial support against U.S. forces in Somalia after the Gulf War, and in Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere.
In 2002, when Kurdish forces captured 16 al-Qaeda men crossing the border from Iran, the Kurds convinced only three publications (The New Yorker, The Christian Science Monitor, and WORLD) to send reporters to investigate their stories and failed to persuade the CIA to interview the detainees. One of them, Iraqi Haqi Ismail, was trained in Afghan camps, he told WORLD, after he was recruited by "a man named Ahmed Fadil Khalaylah," likely the then-unknown Zarqawi.
...
Comments
Post a Comment